You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO request from Stephanie, who is looking for this historical romance. Content warning for the description below:
The heroine’s name is Maggie. She is poor and lives in a shack, but she’s beautiful. She wears a threadbare gown and her creepy dad secretly lusts after her, but wants her to stay a virgin because a rich guy named John wants to marry her. She doesn’t like John, but he sets fires in her body and soul much to her chagrin. She loves some other milquetoast dude who does not have the courage to spurn his family. She had a grandmother with a cow and, one night after being out with John, she hears the cow mooing and finds the grandma dead. She married John and has two boys: one like John and one who is gentler and her favorite.
Now this is where it gets effed up. There is a storm that causes the area to flood. John, out of love for Maggie, saves the son she likes instead of the other one. Somewhere in this the dumbass figures out John is worth her love.
Effed up indeed.
Maggie: Her Marriage
by Taylor Caldwell
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What the fuck. John is a major douche.
Wait… we WANT to find this?
If a Bitch asks, the Bitchery will look.
Was it “Maggie: Her Marriage” by Taylor Caldwell? It is set in 19th century Virginia and features a poor woman named Maggie who is determined to escape poverty; she marries John, a wealthy landowner, to the disapproval of the rest of society, who naturally feel John could have married better than a poor blacksmith’s daughter.
Just out of curiosity – Scifigirl1986, how is JOHN being a douche the thing that you came away with from this description? That sounds like it would fit the dad, and Maggie having a favorite kid kind of sucks, but it sounds like John’s OK to me.
No idea what the book is.
Looks like HeatherS is correct. MAGGIE: HER MARRIAGE is available on the OpenLibrary, and I just flipped through it. The ending matches the description. Husband and sons are in carriage. Bridge collapses or something. Husband and sons go in the river.
“Well, Margaret, we don’t know just what happened. But John said to me, when he could, that there was no use trying to save both children at once. He said he thought of you, even when he was fighting in that water, trying to swim against the current that he must save Dickie for you. So he caught at poor little Dickie and tried to swim with him. A tree trunk came along, dashing, swirling, and he got between it and the boy. That’s when his leg was broken. But somehow, thanks to God, he caught hold of the roots of a tree, and held himself and Dickie above water until Seth Holbrooks had come up, and could drag them out.”
Meanwhile (this is upsetting and I wish I hadn’t read it), the other son, described as a baby, is screaming for the father. Another man jumps into save him, gets hit by a log in the river, other man and baby boy drown. Maggie knows there are a lot of miserable days ahead of them, especially thinking of poor dead baby Gregory, but at least she and husband will be together. End of book. (Literally, the description above is two or three pages until the end.
And yeah, the father choosing to save the son he knows his wife loves more…not a good look.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL24213150M/Maggie_her_marriage
Well, if you can only save one … . Sophie’s choice, anyone? That’s kind of a cruel scenario to force on the guy. I mean, he already knows his wife only married him for money.
So not my catnip. Any of it. But I can see why it might have stuck.
Seriously? Saving the one you can get to first or the one who needs help more are valid choices. Deciding to save one because the wife who never loved you loves that one more while the other sobs for you is a sh—y move. Douche seems a relatively mild description.
Yes!!! That is the book! Oh you bitches are the BEST!!!! Yeah totally not catnip but some how this book stayed in my mind since I read it tons of years ago. Is Maggie the heroine or the anti heroine? what kind of effed up person would call this a ROMANCE? It’s super crazy. Just reading that part in quotes brought me right back. I am now at peace and maybe I’ll read it again to see if it was really that bad but I’m thinking yeah it probably is. Thank you bitchery! Thank you!
Well, triage goes on in every major incident ever. Given that John successfully saved the elder and someone else died trying to save the baby he seems to have made the right choice, whatever his reasons.
Based on the description, there was no way he could have saved both sons. No one is thinking rationally under those circumstances. Dude had probably less than four seconds to make a decision or save neither son. He did save one son. The hell more can you ask of a guy, that he suddenly turn superhuman and somehow save them both? The reasons for saving the other son aren’t any better anyway (whichever son he didn’t save would have been screaming for him; the baby was always less likely to make it; choosing the one your wife doesn’t like best to spite her is an even worse look). And the poor guy, he’s lost his baby and married to this awful woman and he’ll probably blame himself for the death of the other son his entire life.
Woo! It only took me 10 years to get a HaBO! *victory dance*
Anonymous, no one is suggesting he could have saved both sons. Nice deflection there. Obviously he could only save one. The issue is, in the heat of the moment, his first thought was, “I need to save that one because my wife loves him more!” No, it wouldn’t have been better if he’d chosen the one his wife loved less. Her opinion shouldn’t have been a factor at all or in any way an influence in which child lived or died, and the fact that she was what he was thinking about in a life-and-death situation makes him an a–hole.
(I wonder how many people would be as forgiving if the genders were switched. If it was a woman who two kids and a neglectful husband or boyfriend she desperately wants to love her, so in a desperate situation she thinks about which one her husband loves more and chooses to save that one and leave behind the one he doesn’t. Would so many be so quick to say, “Well, she did what she had to!”)
The Bitchery is remarkable! Funny though, a hundred years ago, when I was a youngish reader, I read and acquired (I thought), every single Taylor Caldwell book. They’re all still in a box somewhere, and I remember many of them, but this struck not a single memory chord. Gonna have to hunt down that box . . .
Some people become their best selves under intense pressure. Most people do the opposite. If you can only save one child, and you have four seconds to make the choice of what to do, then you are behaving largely on instinct. You may not have the best reasons for making your decision. It doesn’t matter in that situation. Judging someone in this context seems hideously unfair, particularly when it’s possible that the person forced with the horrible choice has been emotionally abused by the third party influencing their choices (which sounds possible in this case).
If you change the genders, in all honesty I think I feel more sympathetic, because my mind goes more quickly to “he was probably abusing her wasn’t he.” Abuse victims don’t behave ideally.
I’m just sitting here boggling at the author’s plot resolution choices here. Geesh!